Take off that headband and he’s Dylan Thomas with an attitude problem.

Also, I am absolutely INTRIGUED by the technology in this comic. Is Templar set in the near future? The idea of a successful localized internet based newspaper and television service boggles my mind and piques my interest. Is it like pay-per-view? Do they pay individually per episode like a sort of TV iTunes? Do they subscribe to shows and channels and pay for them individually, or in a package thing? Or do they pay towards a Media conglomerate who basically runs all the media in and around Templar? Or is it run by the city? A government subsidized media with incredibly low standards. Wouldn’t be the first complex government debacle I’ve seen in this city.

Oh god I’m rambling.

Ands no Mes, Ben isn’t rich as hell. If Ben is rich, then I’m upper middle class driving an Acura and taking monthly trips to my beach house in the Hamptons.

“Rich” is a relative term. I totally get where Mesmer is coming on that. My family didn’t have hot running water in their apartment until I was nine and we didn’t live in a place with central heating until I was 13.

This is a slightly alternate universe. Exactly where it diverged Spike is vague about but the older, non-monotheistic religions seem to have a larger place in the background culture and there is or was a guerilla war going on in Australia.

Man, Ben is completely unphased by unusual shit, isn’t he? I know if someone said they had an upbringing like Mesmer’s I’d be wondering whether or not they’re pulling my chain. Guess it’s a symptom of living under the Jakes.

Entirely unrelated to the comic and maybe a bit rude: Can Spike filter what ads come through via Project Wonderful? (Probably a dumb question)
Just wondering because this Crazy Ghosts banner is creepin’ the piss outta me. That, and she’s posted about terrible ads on her twitter before. Specifically, ads that use BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS as their sole form of advertisement.
(Of course, I click it anyways. FYTA was shut down and I’m achin’ for new things that might be horrible.)

It bugs me when people say “you’re rich, because the average person in south ebolaland lives on 30 cents a day” as if it was actually meaningful to extract figures like that from one economy and present them in the context of a very different one.

Mesmer strikes me as the sort of person who is preparing to do just exactly that.

While it would be hard to extrapolate 30 cents a day, there are people living in parts of the world without access to clean water, healthy food, or decent educational, informational or economic opportunities. You can’t necessarily perfectly compare dollars to reals, rupees, etc but you can extrapolate what it means to have decent food, shelter and hygeine. While there are certainly people in the United States who fit the global definition of poverty, most people you’ll meet that consider themselves poor are actually quite wealthy by global standards. By those standards, it’s more irritating to listen to a kid who can even have his feelings medicated say that he is poor.

I don’t know if this is where Mesmer was going with it, maybe she was going to pull the “you have your health, friends and sanity” argument. We’ll see, right?

I think it’s going to be more about how Ben ACTS like a kid from a wealthy background…which he is. It’s not very hard to spot the difference between middle/upper middle class kid in reduced circumstances and kid who was born poor, raised poor, and is still poor. Not foolproof…but not difficult.

Many people don’t have an adequate standard of living. No food security, no safe place to live, and so on, and that’s in the States, never mind places with ebola. I’m middle class, and that makes me feel pretty damn rich, and pretty damn fortunate. How can anyone not feel rich compared to someone who doesn’t know if they’ll eat tomorrow? Should we compare ourselves to people who lead lives of disgusting excess? I’m not rich because my cat doesn’t have his own butler and yacht?

I reckon it’s our capitalist consumer society – no one can feel satisfied with their lives, ever, because they’re constantly bombarded with images of people that have more, more, more. Having grown up hungry and homeless, it is also hard for me to understand how people could take a warm, dry place to sleep and food security for granted, but by now I’m used to how pissed off people get when you call them rich for it. Even the kids of doctors and lawyers who live in million dollar homes will get pissed when you call them rich. I wonder what it is about being “rich” with which people don’t want to identify? Is the judgment that’s attached to the label? Or is it a belief that “rich” signifies a person without problems and hardships, and the power to attain whatever they desire? Maybe rich is more of a relative than objective term, and its only meaning is “those with more money than me,” so by definition no one can ever think of themselves as rich?

I do wonder where Mesmer is going with this, considering he’s opening with a romantic glorification of poverty.

Uh… how do we know Mesmer isn’t a female? I had been pretty sure Mesmer was just a hairy chick until I read all these comments and saw everyone referring to Mesmer as a “he”. But… no where in the comic that I can recall seeing does anyone refer to Mesmer as a he or she, and it just seemed like Kingdom Come had only female employees and Mesmer LOOKS pretty femiminne beyond the hairy face – but I have seen some hairy women working at the Wal-mart the next town over from me so that doesn’t really mean anything…. in short:

I suppose in some OTHER alt-Arizona, there’s a Chick!Mesmer, but if I remember right, Spike confirmed gender for Mesmer on Twitter after his first appearance, and he is definitely a dude. Just enjoys the frilly side of the store, when shopping.

I just don’t see girl when I see Mez. It’s the square jawline, the facial hair…Shit, give Ben longer hair and he’s easily femmier to my eyes than Mesmer.

Mebbe it’s the ambiguous fro and the lips that are throwing people off. In illustration often times men are drawn “lipless” to more distinguish them from their stylized female counterparts. But this doesn’t reflect real life as we all know that menz do indeed own lips :P

Random: I totally made Mesmer Black and Jewish in my brain when he was first introduced.